.............................

He gives a vivid exposition of several events in the Gospels
that happen at Bethany:

the scene when Jesus and His disciples are received in the home of
Martha and Mary, where Martha is busy preparing the meal and Mary
chooses to sit and listen to Jesus,

the raising from the dead of Lazarus, the brother of Martha and Mary,

the meal at the home of Simon the leper where Mary anoints Jesus with
precious perfumes,

the Ascension of Jesus.

Bethany was a unique place for Jesus.

"Love and friendship. These two words sum up the heart of Bethany.
Bethany is the place where Jesus Christ loves His own, and His own do
not doubt it. It is also the place of friendship. Friendship with the
living God.

"These two words reveal the heart of Christ. He desires friends, not
servants. He desires love, not servitude.

"In the cold temple of Jerusalem, God was served. But in the warmth of
a Bethany home, He was loved and befriended.

"When I read this passage, I see a Lord who is saying, 'I didn't come
to this earth to be served. I came to have friends. I came to love and
be loved. I came to take a people into my very bosom. I came to disclose
the secrets of my heart to my friends. For I am at home with them.'

"This the meaning of Bethany. And it's what the Lord is after in His
church."

"Sightings
of the true God" are life changing. It was life changing for Abraham.
He had a sighting of the true God and left home for a strange land.
Saul had one on the road to Damascus and it totally changed the
direction of his life, even down to changing his name to Paul.

A sighting of the true God;

have I had one?

am I really looking out for one?

OR am I stuck in my comfort zones and routines?

would a sighting of the true God turn my life upside down too much for comfort?

I am reminded of Tommy Tenny in "God Chasers" and other books encouraging
active passionate pursuit of sightings of God. God responds to passion.
God is a passionate God.

Am I on a passionate committed search for a sighting of the true God?

Such a sighting is life changing:

how then do we live?

the context for everything changes

comfort zones fade in value and are seen to be temporary hiding places
in the great span of space and time before the living God

am I prepared for such change?

Can one be prepared for such change?

Beginning of June I am heading down to Abstatt for a conference with
Frank Viola. Looking forward to doing what believers do when they are
together. Worshipping Jesus. Accepting He is Lord. Looking for Him
among the bothers and sisters. Hoping for ... expectantly ... a
sighting of the true God.

Thirdly the ambiguous attitude of the people and authorities in Turkey.

Such barbarism is all the more disturbing when it happens so close to home. Turkey is a candidate for EU membership. It is a popular holiday destination. Two groups from my daughter's school will spend a week there in October. Many fellow residents of NL are of Turkish origin.

So are we in Europe going backwards into barbarism? Is this the 'clash of cultures'? Do we have to pay attention to Jespersen and Pittelkow and their book "Islamists and Naivists"?

Are we strong enough in our faith to face the persecution, when it comes our way, with such grace as the families of these martyrs?

This book contains so much. To try to capture the passion and purpose of God in human language is an endless challenge. (We have to live our relationships with God, not just write and read about them.)

And so far, I have only read the early chapters and the closing chapters. My wife has this habit of reading books from the end. "This is amazing! You must read this!" And so I was tempted to skip to the closing chapter, the Afterword, which is a kind of a check-list in the spirit of 2 Corinthians 13:5

"Examine yourselves to see whether you are in the faith; test yourselves. Do you not realize that Christ Jesus is in you—unless, of course, you fail the test?"

Evelyn found this check-list at an appropriate moment. We were heading into a big discussion in our gathering about how we are organised and whether we should be more connected with institutional church. So now we are aiming to use this check-list to stimulate some evaluation in our group about what we understand by 'church' and how we do it together.

Just finished reading Brian McLaren's book "a Generous
Or+hodoxy" and although the epilogue brought me to tears when he
describes some of the criticism he received when it was first
published, the chapters on '... Incarnational' and '... Emergent' gave
me a glimpse of a bright future for the church, the People of God.

Some time ago, somewhere on the Internet I read a negative critical review of this book. That review put me off acquiring or reading the book for quite a while. Now I understand it was probably written by an American fundamentalist.

The book has the magnificent subtitle "Why I am a missional, evangelical, post/protestant,
liberal/conservative, mystical/poetic, biblical,
charismatic/contemplative, fundamentalist/Calvinist,
Anabaptist/Anglican, Methodist, catholic, green, incarnational,
depressed- yet hopeful, emergent, unfinished Christian." These are the chapter headings from the second part of the book. McLaren makes the point that there has been far too much fragmentation of the church because of focus on differences in theology, doctrine and practice and we have lost sight of the big chunk of orthodox belief that we have in common. In these chapters he weaves all these threads of the church together again.

There is a lot I now understand better after reading this book (always comforting to read a book that confirms your current thinking and then challenges you to take the next step):- that Jesus did not intend to establish (yet another) religion- that He did not intend to establish the church the way we know it- what Jesus meant when he sent His followers on a mission to declare the Kingdom of God- some of the history of the church, including its history in North America and the why and how of fundamentalism there.

But it is the chapter "Why I am Incarnational" that put many things in place for me.

Notes for a talk on 21 January 2007

A glorious set of readings comprising the essentials of being believers:

In Luke 4: Acting in the power and guidance of the Spirit - Jesus, fulfilling the prophecy of Isaiah "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because He has anointed me to preach good news .."

In 1 Cor 12: The unity of the Body. Paul's marvellous image of the parts of the body each playing their part in harmony in the unity of the whole. We are all united in the body of believers under Christ - no matter what our tradition, our liturgical practice, our forms of worship. Those who believe in Jesus are united in one body.

The diversity of gifts and ministries: apostles, prophets, teachers, workers of miracles, gifts of healing, helpers, administrators, speakers in tongues, and interpreters - we need them all, and they should all be found in a lively, healthy, part of the body that is fulfilling the mission.

In Nehemiah 8: And the example of the body acting together in unity in the OT story of Ezra. All the people assembled to hear the word of God. Learning together. They hear the Word and their response is worship. Not worship of the great teacher or leader, not worship of the book,

And all the people listened attentively to the Book of the Law. ... Ezra opened the book. All the people could see him because he was standing above them; and as he opened it, the people all stood up. Ezra praised the LORD, the great God; and all the people lifted their hands and responded, "Amen! Amen!" Then they bowed down and worshipped the LORD with their faces to the ground. (NIV)

"Perhaps all of us in wealthier nations in the 21st century struggle with the pace of our societies and with this loss of ends because of too many means. We have so many things to do, we forget why we are doing them; we have so many things, we forget why they matter."

This morning while reviewing the mess of my life in prayer, I was given the thought, "It is possible to act perfectly in every circumstance."

Whatever the circumstances and preceding choices and actions, it is nevertheless possible now to make the best of all possible choices and to take the best of all possible actions. I think that's what Jesus did. He lived among the real people and circumstances of His time and made the best of all possible choices and took the best of all possible actions as he moved through His days.

Last night we watched the second part of a Doctor Who story. As the story rushed through its climax towards the happy ending, Rose, The Doctor's companion, thought she had lost him for ever.
The Doctor was deep down a pit on a planet that was drifting into a black hole. But Rose got over her grief and was doing her best to make choices and take actions on the basis of the maxim, "That's what The Doctor would have done."

She wanted to stay on the planet in the hope of reuniting with The Doctor "because that's what he would have done for her". But the team insisted on rescuing her and taking her in the escape rocket. Once on the rocket, making their escape, when it became manifest that the evil spirit from the pit was being carried by one of the team, Rose saved the universe, but put herself and the rest of the team in mortal danger, by shooting out a window so that the demon was sucked out into space to be consumed by the the black hole, "because that's what The Doctor would have done".

And so we have the components of a simple model of discipleship:

seek to act as the Master would have done, even though it may seem you have lost contact with Him and it may involve extreme self sacrifice,

keep the hope that it is always possible to make a fresh start in discipleship even though previous choices may have been wrong and the present circumstances look really bad.

I remember being bowled over by these when I first read them some years ago. Some one around here had a draft of 'Houses that Change the World' printed on a pile of A4 paper. It was like a gale of fresh air bringing hope of release from the cage of institutional church, summarised into fifteen compact challenging statements.

So where are we now? Did that gale actually move us anywhere? Well, a couple of years ago a different blast moved us out of the institutional church. And for twelve months we have been gathering on Sundays twice a month in a home. The order for our gathering is very much formed by our lifetime experience of churches.

And Marc has summarised emerging church according to TSK into one PowerPoint slide. According to this, church "Happens on The Way" and making (and keeping) friends are one of the four processes in church planting.

So our church is happening on the way. A bunch of friends finding the way to be church, although our style and culture is somewhat different from TSK's. We don't meet in a pub where they have draught Guinness. (I hope meeting in a pub with draught Guinness is not normative for being Emerging Church). Nevertheless, we do carry a lot of traditional baggage - so there are probably other respects in which we do not conform to the classic emerging model, maybe we're traditional emerging.

Tangentrider Laura is blessing us through her research on emerging
ecclesiology and a distillation of the knowledge she is gathering. See
EMERGING ECCLESIOLOGY abstract-esque for a collection of definitions of
emerging church, some of the common themes and links to examples.

Notes for a Talk on 2006-12-03 First in Advent

Theme the coming of Jesus

Intro - Advent 1 - New Year on the Church Calendar

Advent: we prepare for the coming of Jesus. Using today's readings and a couple of other references I want to try to put the coming of Jesus into the context of God's big plan for the universe.

The coming of Jesus is a momentous event. Jesus was there in the beginning of creation. (John 1:1-3 ) Jesus came to earth, born as a human child. Jesus sent His Spirit - the Comforter, the Spirit of God at Pentecost in Acts 2 and He continues to come as we receive His Spirit. Jesus will come again in glory. So Jesus has come, is coming and will come again.

The Big PictureNow to try to explain what I mean by the 'big picture' that forms the context for Jesus' coming. This is a perspective which struck me in a passage of a book I have been slowly reading for some time and which I have referred to here before. Eugene H. Peterson "Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places" . This is the first in a series of five books laying a theological foundation for the 21st century. The next in the series is about reading the Bible and is entitled "Eat This Book" .

The idea which captured me is that the purpose of God throughout the history of the universe is salvation. It comes in the following passage:

I was thinking more about that on Saturday during a fleeting visit to Cologne Cathedral. It was a rather hectic day. My son and I took my teenage daughter and a couple of her school friends to a rock concert by Evanescence at a podium in Cologne. The concert was in the evening, but the girls were anxious to be early so they could get a position near the stage. So we delivered them in the early afternoon in time to be among the first hundred in the queue. We parked the car and my son and I took a metro into the city centre.

The focal point of the centre of Cologne is, of course, the cathedral. We found our way out of the central railway station onto the public space around the cathedral. 'Town square' is the concept according to Wikipedia. It is a remarkable sight. There is the huge, extremely ornate cathedral, with the functional city centre buildings in all sorts of styles pressing in around it, crowding the space.

There was a constant stream of people walking past the cathedral between the station and the shopping area on the other side of the square, like ants between their nest and their food and material supplies. And around the cathedral the tourists of the world were taking their pictures and listening to their tour guides.

We wandered into the cathedral to have a look around. The tourist information explains that the cathedral does not actually have walls but the space between the supporting pillars is filled with the lattice work of coloured glass windows. Nevertheless, there was a sombre darkness inside filling the impressive high long space formed between the soaring columns and arches of the interior.

The place was crawling with tourists and their guides. Far in the distance, beyond the public space was the high altar glowing golden. I tried to relate all this to the God of the Gospel. Could this building, the effort which went into its design and construction and the wonder of it's appearance form a sacrifice of worship acceptable to God? Is that what God is looking for from His people?

I looked at the statues of bishops and princes around the walls and I doubted. It seemed more likely this was built to their glory and power systems rather than to the God of the Gospel.

I looked at the little side altars and shrines, with their racks of little flickering candles and invitations to make an offering to some cause or saint - very picturesque, but my impression was of pagan idolatry, rather than of something which the God of the Gospel would appreciate.

I tried to figure out how does this place contribute to communicating the Gospel to the trail of people passing outside doing their Saturday shopping?

Chris Hamer-Hodges is running what promises to be an interesting series of posts on questions and objections which challenge the truth and validity of the Gospel of Jesus. Triggered by Mark Hadfield, he opened with an invitation to add to the inventory of questions and objections to be covered.

Looks like a good opportunity to hone our apologetics. I put my pebbles on the pile here and here and here.

A short while ago I had an exchange of comments with Mark on madetopraisehim on the topic of "protocols we've created to approach God". Mark had used that phrase in a comment and it caught my attention.

Part of the trigger for me was the word "protocol". In the context of my work it has to do with automated communications and systems for business to business communications. And I have the idea that all parties that are in communication using the protocol have to know the protocol and have to have agreed to its specification. So when Mark wrote about protocols WE have created to approach God, I thought, "wait a minute, what does God think about these protocols? When did He sign up for an interchange agreement using these protocols? Do we think we can set these protocols up one sidedly and expect God to conform?"

There is always a risk with these big events that all the circumstantial stuff on the periphery crowds out the heart of the matter. But that was certainly not the case this time. The heart of the matter was worshipping Jesus Christ, and with the worship leadership of Darlene, the Hillsong musicians and the EO Ronduit facilities we certainly got into deep worship and in such a huge crowd in a large stadium that is an awesome experience.

It was much better than I expected. I only knew Hillsong by reputation. My impression of Darlene Zschech was that she was a rather serene worship performer. The pictures on her site give that impression. But she was not like that at all. She is a gutsy Australian lady. And she is one fire with love for Jesus and does not mind letting everyone know. So the music, the singing and the message was really powerful. But above all it was authentic worship and God acknowledged that with His presence.

The theme of authenticity in worship came up earlier in the evening. Linda Wagenmakers was in the support programme and closed with a song on the theme of authenticity in worship - it does not matter how you worship, but your worship should be authentic, from your heart and not a matter of following rules or customs.

Darlene made the comment that she is getting wilder and looser as she gets older. She just wants to let out her love for Jesus in praising and worshipping Him. And if in the process she looks silly dancing around the stage, she doesn't care.

It provides a compact overview of the problem of evil with references
to earlier larger works by Wright and to projects he has in progress.

He provides a novel approach to the Gospel by explaining what the
problem is that Jesus came to solve. He gives an integrated view of the
Old Testament and the New Testament and the repeating patterns of Gods
efforts to achieve reconciliation with his loved ones in his fallen
creation. In the end reconciliation could only be achieved by the
sacrifice of His Son.

He begins with analysis of the state of world civilisation and the
manifestations of evil.

".. as soon as I thought of speaking about evil, I realized that this
is a timely, not to say urgent, topic. Everybody is talking about evil.
After September 11th, 2001, President Bush declared that there was an
'axis of evil' out there somewhere, and that we had to find the evil
people and stop them doing any more evil. Tony Blair declared
ambitiously that we should aim at nothing short of ridding the world of
evil."

"The odd thing about this new concentration on evil is that it seems to
have taken many people, not least politicians and the media, by
surprise. Of course they would say that there has always been evil; but
it seems to have come home to the Western world in a new way. The older
discussions of evil tended to be more abstract, with so-called natural
evil (represented by the tidal wave) and so-called moral evil
(represented by the gangsters). ... Auschwitz posed the problem in a
new way, September 11th 2001 on the one hand, and the 'natural'
disasters of the tsunami in the Indian Ocean and the hurricane on the
American Gulf Coast, have now kick-started a fresh wave of discussion
about what evil is, where it comes from, how to understand it, and what
it does to your world-view whether you're a Christian or an atheist or
anything else. And, not least, what, if anything, can be done about it."

He positions the Enlightenment and post-modernism in respect of their
efforts to deal with the question of evil.

He deals rather carefully with the topic of demons. I guess
where NTW is coming from,
talking of demons is normally a bit out of scope. But he recognises the
influence of quasi-personalities. And that organizations, corporations,
even churches are more than the sum of their parts and appear to be
driven by a persona.

"It isn't long before we are standing in line to buy whatever is being offered. And because none of the purchases does what we had hoped for, or at least not for long, we are soon back to buy another, and then another. The process is addictive. We have become consumers of packaged spiritualities.

"This is also idolatry. We never think of using this term for it since everything we are buying or paying for is defined by the adjective "Christian". But idolatry it is nevertheless: God packaged as a product; God depersonalized and made available as a technique or program. The Christian market in idols has never been more brisk or lucrative."

But Matt has been there too:

When the music fades And all is stripped away And I simply come Longing just to bring Something that's of worth That will bless your heart

I'll bring You more than a song For a song in itself Is not what You have required You search much deeper within Through the ways things appear You're looking into my heart

I'm coming back to the heart of worship And it's all about You All about You, Jesus I'm sorry Lord for the thing I've made it When it's all about You It's all about You JesusThe Heart of Worship

"I'm sorry Lord for the thing I've made it" - that's the recognition of idolatry. Whereas the "heart of worship" is the focus on Jesus, the person, the God/man, the Christ - not the product, nor the music, nor the singer.